Physical Therapy Shoe Covering

ABSTRACT

Disclosed is a shoe cover adapted for use during physical therapy. The present invention is comprised of a toe cap and a base connected to the toe cap. The toe cap provides a surface that can slide along the ground to assist patients who have difficulty raising their feet in taking a step. The toe cap is adapted to receive the end of a shoe and is designed so that the shoe is freely removable from the toe cap. The base fits beneath the sole of the shoe, providing a high-fraction material upon which the physical therapy patient may tread. A plurality of fastening means secure the shoe within the device. In the preferred embodiment, a handle extends from the base, allowing a physical therapist to grip the handle and provide assistance to the patient in picking up their foot.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/764,841 filed on Feb. 14, 2013, entitled “Toe Glide.” The above identified patent application is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety to provide continuity of disclosure.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1.Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to shoe and toe coverings. Specifically, the present invention relates to the field of medical devices that fit over a person's foot or shoe and allow physical therapists to assist patients with the patients' physical training.

Physical trauma, stroke, and other medical problems can necessitate the use of post-injury physical training to restore an individual's ability to move and function normally. Physical training is often a grueling undertaking and patients generally need a substantial amount of assistance from physical therapists to complete the exercises, especially when first starting out. When patients are attempting to regain movement and flexibility in their legs, they often use treadmills, with or without a partial weight-bearing mechanism, in order to exercise in a controlled environment. However, patients who are still attempting to gain adequate movement in their legs may be in danger of tripping over their shoelaces or require assistance from a physical therapist to even pick up their feet. Errant shoelaces can be especially troublesome for patients who have had hip replacement surgery, because such patients often have poor balance for a few weeks after the procedure. There are no helpful options in the field to address these problems, therefore this may unnecessarily delay the patient's recovery.

Several types of shoes and shoe-attachment devices are intended to aid in recovery during physical therapy. Many types of athletic shoes are designed to be used in conjunction with physical therapy, but they don't directly address the problems inherent in all shoes when used during physical therapy; they merely provide additional shock absorption or stability control. Other types of athletic shoes designed for physical therapy have hook-and-loop fastening material in place of shoelaces, which reduces the risk of tripping. Such shoes are still an incomplete solution however, because they offer no help to patients who have difficulty raising their feet to take a step forward. There are also devices that attach to a patient's shoes and provide constant guidance to help the patient achieve a symmetrical gait, but they are part of the larger treadmill apparatus and cannot be used independently of the treadmill.

The present invention relates to a novel shoe covering intended to help during rehabilitation and physical therapy and addresses all of these issues. The physical therapy shoe covering affixes around the outside of a patient's shoe. The toe cap completely surrounds the toe portion of the shoe, providing a smooth surface that the patient can drag across the surface of the floor while undergoing physical therapy to regain leg motion or flexibility. Shoes generally have a high-friction material at the front or toe region of the shoe, which can be an impediment to physical therapy patients who have poor leg or foot motion because the high-friction surface catches on the floor, increasing the difficulty of walking, tripping the patient, or otherwise impairing the patient's movement. The toe cap covers this high-friction region on shoes.

Contrary to the front end of the shoe where a high-friction material is undesirable, the sole of the shoe covering is comprised of high-friction material to help prevent the patient from slipping. Patients undergoing physical therapy in order to regain movement or strength in their legs after a stroke, traumatic physical injury, hip replacement, or some other type of medical procedure or ailment, often have poor balance or are otherwise unstable. The high-friction material resting beneath their shoes allows them to gain a firmer, steadier grip to the floor and reduces the risk of slipping and falling.

In a preferred embodiment, the physical therapy shoe covering further has a handle extending from the base portion over the shoe, providing physical therapists an easy way to grip the patient's foot and help them take steps. Currently, if a physical therapy patient needs assisting taking steps, the physical therapist grips the shoe laces to help lift the person's foot. This is an undesirable process though because shoe laces can be difficult to grip and grasping them in such a way can potentially loosen them, leading to an increased risk of patients tripping over their shoelaces. Finally, the physical therapy shoe cover also has a plurality of fastening means for securing the shoe to the cover and for covering up the shoelaces, reducing the risk of the patient tripping.

2. Description of the Prior Art

Devices have been disclosed in the prior art that relate to shoe toe coverings. These include devices that have been patented and published in patent application publications. These devices generally relate to toe caps composed of various hard materials. The following is a list of devices deemed most relevant to the present disclosure, which are herein described for the purposes of highlighting and differentiating the unique aspects of the present invention, and further highlighting the drawbacks existing in the prior art.

Similar devices are generally limited to toe caps either mounted on or manufactured into shoes, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,438 to Fran, U.S. Pat. No. 5,210,963 to Harwood, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,598,323 to Gougelet. Although such devices are similar in structure to the toe cap portion of the present invention, in application they are much different. The toe cap of the present invention is designed to provide a smooth, low-friction surface that a physical therapy patient can drag across the floor without impediment and is not designed specifically to protect the wearer's toes from any sort of crushing or falling force. The present invention also has several additional elements, including the high-friction base designed to prevent slips and the handle designed to allow a physical therapist to help patients lift up their foot. This type of prior art has little application to the field of medical devices, except as it pertains to preventing injuries.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,074,060 to Brncick discloses a removable protector that fits over the toe portion of a shoe. It is specifically designed to not restrict the biomechanical motion of the foot and thus can be worn while participating in sports or other physical activities in order to protect toes from a prior injury. Brncick, like the above toe cap inventions, is still primarily concerned with protecting the user from injury, rather than assisting in treating an existing injury through rehabilitation and physical therapy. Brncick furthermore tries not to impede natural biomechanical motion, but the present invention seeks to actually improve a rehabbing individual's biomechanical motion by providing a smooth, low-friction front portion to facilitate walking and a high-friction sole portion to prevent slip and falls.

The present invention is a new and improved shoe covering designed to aid patients in rehabbing from strokes, physical trauma, hip replacement, or other ailments that affects the patients' ability to walk. The physical therapy shoe covering provides a slick toe surface that does not impede patients who have difficulty in raising their feet, a high-friction no-slip sole surface that gives patients additional needed traction, and a handle so that physical therapists can more easily assist the patients who need help in even picking up their feet. The present invention substantially diverges in design elements from the prior art and consequently it is clear that there is a need in the art for an improvement to existing physical rehabilitation shoe covering devices. In this regard the instant invention substantially fulfills these needs.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In view of the foregoing disadvantages inherent in the known types of toe caps now present in the prior art, the present invention provides a new physical therapy shoe covering wherein the same can be utilized for providing convenience for the user when rehabbing from a debilitating injury that affects the user's ability to walk.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved physical therapy shoe covering device that has all of the advantages of the prior art and none of the disadvantages.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a shoe covering that assists patients undergoing physical therapy.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a shoe covering that has a front toe section with a low coefficient of friction and a base or sole section with a high coefficient of friction.

Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DRAWINGS

Although the characteristic features of this invention will be particularly pointed out in the claims, the invention itself and manner in which it may be made and used may be better understood after a review of the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings wherein like numeral annotations are provided throughout.

FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of the preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a perspective view of the preferred embodiment of the present invention, in use by an individual and covering a shoe.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Reference is made herein to the attached drawings. Like reference numerals are used throughout the drawings to depict like or similar elements of the physical therapy shoe covering. For the purposes of presenting a brief and clear description of the present invention, the preferred embodiment will be discussed as used for supervised rehabilitation for patients recovering from a stroke, trauma, or other injury that has caused decreased mobility. The figures are intended for representative purposes only and should not be considered to be limiting in any respect.

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a perspective view of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. The present invention is a covering that fits over a patient's shoes in order to assist in their recovery from a stroke, battle wounds, or other injury that affects a patient's ability to walk. The present invention comprises a base 12 composed of a high-friction, no-slip material, such as rubber. The base 12 is designed such that it fits under a shoe and extends generally to the edge of the sole of the shoe, such that the person can tread on the base 12 beneath their shoe. Patients undergoing physical therapy in order to relearn how to walk or to otherwise regain strength and movement in their legs are often unsteady and have poor balance due to their physical condition. The high coefficient of friction material of the base 12 prevents sliding when the patients are standing stationary, helping to mitigate the issues of leg strength and balance.

The base 12 extends to the toe cap 11. The toe cap 11 has a plantar surface 21 and an exterior surface 22. The plantar surface 21 forms a substantially flat, contiguous bottom surface with the base 12 that comes in contact with the sole of the shoe. The exterior surface 22 of the toe cap 11 rises from the edges of the plantar surface 21 and forms a shell that is adapted to receive the toe end of a shoe. The toe cap 11 is composed of a hard, smooth material, such as plastic, that has a lower coefficient of friction and can slide along floors without catching or otherwise impeding the user's movement. Whereas the base 12 is intended to not slip, the toe cap 11 is intended to smoothly glide along the surface of the floor. Patients undergoing physical therapy in order to regain leg movement are often not able to pick their feet off of the floor very high, if at all. This can create a risk of injury while rehabilitating because the front of the patients' shoes can catch or drag along the surface of the floor if they do not pick up their foot high enough, potentially resulting in a trip and fall accident. The physical therapy shoe covering mitigates this issue by providing the toe cap 11, which encloses the toe end portion of the shoe and provides a smooth, low-friction surface that may freely be dragged along a floor without catching or otherwise impeding the patients' movement.

The preferred embodiment further comprises a handle 14 that extends from the medial edge to the lateral edge of the base 12 in a generally arch-like fashion, extending upwards far enough such that a shoe can fit beneath the arch and fit into the toe cap 11. The handle 14 provides a means by which a physical therapist can assist patients that have difficulty in even raising their feet when walking on a treadmill or a treadmill-like device. The current general practice within the field is to simply pick up the patient's feet by the shoe laces, but the handle 14 is more stable and easier to grab, allowing the physical therapist to better assist the patient. Attached to the top of the handle 14 is a loop 15 to which a tether can be attached for walking with a walker. The tether is attached from loop 15 and stretches to the patient's walker to provide support via the handle without the physical therapist having to lean over and actually grip the handle.

The invention further comprises a plurality of fastening means 13 for removably securing the physical therapy shoe cover over the patient's shoe. It is essential that the shoe covering is securely affixed to the shoe because the patients generally already have balance issues that would only be magnified by an improperly secured shoe covering. In the preferred embodiment, the fastening means 13 comprises nylon or hook-and-loop fastener straps, but the fastening means 13 may consist of anything that securely holds the sole of the shoe against the base 12 and the front toe region of the shoe within the toe cap 11.

Referring now to FIG. 2, there is shown a perspective view of the preferred embodiment of the present invention, in use. The toe cap 11 provides a smooth surface that glides easily along the floor, allowing a physical therapy patient to walk even if they are not capable of lifting their foot high off the ground. The base 12 provides a stable, high-friction base that will not slip when the patient is standing and their foot is stationary. The combination of the high-friction base 12 and the low-friction toe cap 11 assists patients who have decreased mobility in regaining some of that lost mobility and confidence. The physical therapy shoe covering is large enough such that a shoe can easily fit over the base 12, through the handle 14, into the toe cap 11, and be secured by the fastening means 13.

Overall, this device serves as a novel physical therapy assistance device. The present invention quickly and easily attaches to any type of shoe and it can be used both on a treadmill with a physical therapist assisting the patient in walking and with a walker independent from the treadmill. The physical therapy shoe coverings are a simple way to effectively increase the efficacy and efficiency of a patient's rehab. The present invention is also versatile, providing assistance both to patients that cannot walk alone and patients that are beginning to once again be freely mobile.

It is therefore submitted that the instant invention has been shown and described in what is considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiments. It is recognized, however, that departures may be made within the scope of the invention and that obvious modifications will occur to a person skilled in the art. With respect to the above description then, it is to be realized that the optimum dimensional relationships for the parts of the invention, to include variations in size, materials, shape, form, function and manner of operation, assembly and use, are deemed readily apparent and obvious to one skilled in the art, and all equivalent relationships to those illustrated in the drawings and described in the specification are intended to be encompassed by the present invention.

Therefore, the foregoing is considered as illustrative only of the principles of the invention. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the invention to the exact construction and operation shown and described, and accordingly, all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to, falling within the scope of the invention. 

I claim:
 1. A shoe cover adapted to assist physical therapy patients, comprising: a toe cap composed of a low-friction material and having a plantar surface and an exterior surface, said exterior surface extending upwards from said plantar surface and creating a hollow interior adapted to receive a toe end of a shoe; a base composed of a high-friction material and having a front end and a back end, said toe cap attached to said base at said front end and said base and said plantar surface of said toe cap forming a contiguous planar surface; a plurality of fastening means adapted to securing a shoe, said fastening means attached to said base.
 2. The shoe cover of claim 1, further comprising a handle attached to said base.
 3. The shoe cover of claim 2, further comprising a loop attached to said handle.
 4. The shoe cover of claim 1, wherein said fastening means comprises hook-and-loops fasteners.
 5. The shoe cover of claim 2, wherein said fastening means comprises hook-and-loops fasteners.
 6. The shoe cover of claim 3, wherein said fastening means comprises hook-and-loops fasteners. 